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Exploding Bluebell Tin
Submitted by Tom Taylor.
I don't know on what ship the event occurred, but one of the crew had bought a new camera and wanted to test the accuracy and focal range of the lens. He took his camera up to the bridge and around the bridge were several HF Whip aerials. At the bottom of each aerial attached to the coaming of the bridge was a wire-mesh guard with a hazard warning notice of high RF.
The camera owner positioned a tin of Bluebell on the bridge coaming, just in front of the wire-mesh guard, stepped back about ten feet and "snapped" his photo. He wound on to the next frame - then with a bang, the Bluebell tin exploded !
Fortunately he had the presence of mind to take a photograph of the shattered tin before trying to find out what had caused it.
Both photographs appeared in The Communicator as "before" and "after".
Those pictures certainly spoke a thousand words.
The explosion had been caused by an operator in the Wireless Office transmitting and using that particular aerial. The RF energy around the aerial had ignited the low flash-point vapour in the Bluebell tin which caused the subsequent explosion. If the tin had been in his hand as he was positioning it for his test, and the aerial gone to "transmit" he would probably have lost his hand.
Incidentally, he was very pleased with the outcome of his first photo which clearly showed the Bluebell tin with all the words in very high definition and great clarity.